Sept 12, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — A Sudanese security official said he does not exclude involvement of external hands to the assassination of a Sudanese journalist killed last week.

Director of Operations Department at the National Security and Intelligence service Maj. Gen., Abdelazim Al-Rufaie, in press statements following the graduation ceremony of the 6th special batch of the Security Police, did not rule out involvement of foreign hands in the assassination of journalist Mohamed Taha.

The journalist, Mohamed Taha, editor of the newspaper Al Wifaq, was seized from his home on Tuesday, and his decapitated body was dumped in a street on Wednesday 6 September.

He said that the crime was organized, affirming the full coordination among all the security and police forces which are working in joint teams to solve the crime.

He added that the security organ does not operate a part from the other organs as the crime is organized with many trends of different axis involved. He said that involvement of foreign hands is not excluded, adding that this would be disclosed later.

He further said that what the press sometimes raise may impede the investigation, calling for refraining from assumptions and leaving the security organs perform their task to reach the criminals, particularly that the security organs are capable and had succeeded to discover serious crimes before.

A group claiming to be al-Qaida’s branch in Sudan said Tuesday that it killed the chief editor of a Sudanese independent daily who provoked a furor with an article denounced as blasphemous.

The claim in the slaying of Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed, whose body was found last week, was issued by a previously unknown group called al-Qaida in Sudan and Africa. The authenticity of the claim, posted on the Web site of Al-Arabiya television, could not be independently confirmed.

Arabic language readers can find the text of the al-Qaida claim at

http://www.alarabiya.net/Articles/2006/09/12/27411.htm

(ST)